Strategy Insights

You already know how important video marketing is as a part of your digital strategy, and that’s not changing anytime soon. But there is a new reason to take notice—and it’s live streaming. While live streaming isn’t a wholly new concept (Periscope, acquired by Twitter, launched in early 2015), Facebook has quickly come to dominate the space. In the first year of Facebook Live, the daily watch time for Live broadcasts has increased almost four-fold, and Live now makes up more than 20 percent of all video on Facebook. Live video is watchedthree times longer than pre-recorded video across Facebook as a whole.

How many loyalty programs are you signed up for? How many do you actually use? In a 2016 sample of over 19,000 North American consumers, the average person was a member of about 13 different loyalty programs, but was only active in seven during the past year. Many loyalty programs offer an initial incentive for signing up, but leave the consumer with little motivation to continue. Difficult to navigate points systems, poor digital experiences, and lack of personalization are all common culprits in the failure of most of these programs.

Despite a continued increase in mobile and online purchasing, the majority of all commerce is still happening in the real world. In fact, e-commerce represented just8.1% of total U.S. retail sales in 2016. However, with location-based mobile marketing, brands can leverage the power of digital to drive brick-and-mortar sales, utilizing valuable data to optimize the customer journey.

Today’s highly-connected consumers place tremendous value on their mobile devices, relying on a litany of digital platforms for product research and, increasingly, for their purchases. Gone are the days of old where foot traffic directed retail decision-making. According to Hubspot, smartphones are now the essential part of the customer journey, with 81% of people using their mobile devices to do research before making a purchase. In order to stay competitive and succeed, brands and marketers must embrace the complicated consumer habits of mobile visitors, leveraging digital strategies to drive targeted finger traffic towards meaningful conversions.

If you follow the digital marketing space at all, hearing that “mobile and video are the future” is likely a familiar sentiment. The predictions of the past few years have been spot on—mobile and video are officially the present. In 2016 more than half of all views onYouTube were from mobile and over 1,000,000,000 mobile videos are watched on the platform each day. Considering we check our phones about75 times a day, the need for mobile advertising to adapt is obvious. Which raises key questions—what does great mobile video advertising look like? How does your ad change to better suit the mobile viewer, and what can we expect to see going forward?

According toMarketingSherpa, 73 percent of all B2B leads are NOT sales ready. That same study also found that companies using lead scoring saw a 77 percent boost in lead generation ROI. This quantitative methodology will help you differentiate between those prospects at the beginning of the customer journey, those who are warming up, and those who may be primed to purchase. Creating a lead scoring system allows your sales team to focus their time on leads who are more likely to convert, while holding off on those who are not.

2017 is officially here which means it’s time to review our digital experience trends to watch for the new year. 2016 saw mobile overtake desktop, video overtake traditional content, and behavioral emails replace the traditional email blast. So, what can we expect to see in the next 12 months?

Marketers need to go where their customers are, and according to Business Insider, 2015 was the first time we saw the top fourmessaging apps such as Slack, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp surpass the monthly active users on the top four social media channels.

In 2014, mobile shopping accounted for just19% of total ecommerce sales. In 2016, that number is expected to break 30%, and by 2020 mobile is projected to comprise over 40% of all ecommerce sales. With mobile expected to grow300% faster than traditional ecommerce, allocating additional dollars to your mobile budget goes without saying. Some businesses, however, are struggling to keep up with rapidly changing consumer expectations. Is your mobile marketing strategy ready to capitalize on the growing shift to mobile this holiday season and beyond?

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UNION is a digital marketing agency founded in 2002 and headquartered in Charlotte, NC. Considered a digital marketing leader, UNION collaborates with many of the Southeast region's top brands to achieve business objectives through strategy, creative and technology. The agency specializes in crafting digital marketing platforms, content and campaigns that deliver meaningful and measurable ROI results. Want to work with us?